When asked about the ominous pension crisis in Chicago and Illinois, and his sometimes strained relationship with Emanuel on reforms thereof, Quinn erred on the side of diplomacy: "We passed the pension reform last December, and I signed it into law. The state had $100 billion liability that acculumated over many years and over many governors and legislatures. But we took care of that -- we took that on, head on.

You know, I get along fine with everybody ... whether they're a big city like Chicago and Mayor Emanuel or any little town in our state. It's your job as governor to get along with people and work with them. We have the biggest building and construction program of any state in the union right now and [we] wanna keep on doing that."

As for campaign to keep his post in Springfield, Quinn said he thinks things are going "pretty well." He added: "There's a lot of work to do there but I think our state has turned the corner. When I become governor, we had one former governor in jail and another one going to jail, so we had to straighten that out and we have."